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The End of America: Letter of Warning to a Young Patriot | 
| Author: Naomi Wolf
Publisher: Chelsea Green Publishing
Category: Book
List Price: $13.95
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Avg. Customer Rating:  157 reviews
Sales Rank: 545
Media: Paperback
Edition: 1st
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 192
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.5
Dimensions (in): 8.2 x 5.4 x 0.5
ISBN: 1933392797
Dewey Decimal Number: 323.490973
EAN: 9781933392790
ASIN: 1933392797
Publication Date: September 5, 2007
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Product Description
In a stunning indictment of the Bush administration and Congress, best-selling author Naomi Wolf lays out her case for saving American democracy. In authoritative research and documentation Wolf explains how events of the last six years parallel steps taken in the early years of the 20th centurys worst dictatorships such as Germany, Russia, China, and Chile.
The book cuts across political parties and ideologies and speaks directly to those among us who are concerned about the ever-tightening noose being placed around our liberties.
In this timely call to arms, Naomi Wolf compels us to face the way our free America is under assault. She warns uswith the straight-to-fellow-citizens urgency of one of Thomas Paines revolutionary pamphletsthat we have little time to lose if our children are to live in real freedom.
Recent history has profound lessons for us in the U.S. today about how fascist, totalitarian, and other repressive leaders seize and maintain power, especially in what were once democracies. The secret is that these leaders all tend to take very similar, parallel steps. The Founders of this nation were so deeply familiar with tyranny and the habits and practices of tyrants that they set up our checks and balances precisely out of fear of what is unfolding today. We are seeing these same kinds of tactics now closing down freedoms in America, turning our nation into something that in the near future could be quite other than the open society in which we grew up and learned to love liberty, states Wolf.
Wolf is taking her message directly to the American people in the most accessible form and as part of a large national campaign to reach out to ordinary Americans about the dangers we face today. This includes a lecture and speaking tour, and being part of the nascent American Freedom Campaign, a grassroots efforts to ensure that presidential candidates pledge to uphold the constitution and protect our liberties from further erosion.
The End of America will shock, enrage, and motivatespurring us to act, as the Founders would have counted on us to do in a time such as this, as rebels and patriotsto save our liberty and defend our nation.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 152 more reviews...
Are laws being changed such that America is heading towards fascism? May 12, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
I really enjoyed this quick read (150 pages). It reminds the reader how fragile democracy is, and shows the slippery slope we are on towards losing our freedoms in America. 4 stars instead of 5 because: the editor did a poor job of catching all spelling/grammatical errors, and because I thought some of the parallels were a little overblown. Still, a great read though, and one that I would definitely recommend.
Forks in the Road May 8, 2008
What most of us know of totalitarian states comes from Hitler's Third Reich, the paradigm of a controlled, aggressive society. The screen images are deeply imprinted-- the Fuehrer ranting, the massive rallies, the frozen corpses. Yet how this 12-year arc came together is much less known. Wolf's booklet is not a history of that period. Rather it's a timely cautionary tale of the steps through which totalitarian societies like the Third Reich come together. The import is clear-- is the good, old USA, land of the free and home of the brave, stumbling down a similar path in the wake of the so-called War on Terrorism. Given our democratic tradition, a parallel may seem far-fetched. But that's the problem.
Most importantly, Wolf shows totalitarianism need not appear overnight. It can occur in stages of legal authorization which she terms "fascist shift". In Germany's case, the shift consisted of moves to weaken checks and balances of parliament, expand the powers of the executive, and fatally weaken civil liberties, especially habeas corpus which prevents arbitrary and indefinite detention. If this sounds familiar, it's probably no accident. Nonetheless, it seems possible that these steps can be taken without totalitarian ends in mind, which may well be the Bush administration's short-sighted belief. Nonetheless, putting these tools in place, whatever the goal, creates a weapon that can be exploited at any time.
Wolf's examples range beyond fascist Germany, to include Stalin's Soviet Union, Mussolini's fascist Italy, and lesser regimes such as Pinochet's Chile. Despite individual differences, she shows the strong resemblances between how power grabs are justified to an uncertain populace and how that power is consolidated in the hands of a few.
Now, past war-time presidents have subverted the Constitution in various ways, as Wolf acknowledges. But, as she also points out, upholders of democratic rights have managed to bounce back to mitigate the abuses. The current assault, however, takes place within an indefinite War on Terror which may last for decades without a clear-cut end point. Thus, the pressures to defend against terrorists foreign and domestic may well be of indefinite duration. And, as Wolf shows, it's the threat of enemies inside and ouside that provides the strongest cover to a totalitarian move.
A big step has already been taken with President Bush's claim that he has the right to arrest anyone deemed an "enemy combatant" and detain them indefinitely without legal representation. Of course, most of us know the administration's rather expansive view of what methods can be used to extract information or confessions from detainees-- another big step in totalitarian shifts. Now, it's true that Wolf generally bypasses the cultural aspect of the shift. But that too should be kept in mind. For example, the TV show "48 Hours" has worked to soften audience abhorrance of torture techniques within a rigged dramatic framework. Perhaps that's not the producers' intended outcome, but it is a key practical result, nonetheless.
Wolf certainly doesn't claim that the US has become fascist or that some such is inevitable, even under pressures of the terror war. But a trend has emerged and an informed citizenry needs to beware the kind of road we're headed down. In my little book, Democrats can't be counted on to furnish the needed "bounce back'" since they have themselves been stampeded into rash legislative action on too many occasions. It may be a cliche but only an aroused citizenry can ultimately protect against the seductions of a fascist shift. For in small doses, the shift can appear quite comforting to a beleaguered public. But once the trap closes, the results can be as fatal as those frozen corpses on the steppes of western Russia.
 Schizoid America: The End of an Idea That Never Existed May 3, 2008
4 out of 7 found this review helpful
This is a miswritten book not very well researched and schizoid. But it is also describes scary phenomenon and makes valid points.
The book is premised on the idea of America as the freest nation on earth and then warns patriots against the ending of that idea. The trouble is that ideal America never existed and the literary outcome is an example of American schizophrenia. Why did Ms Wolf structure the book around such a proposition? Do American audiences demand to be treated like fools?
Liberty? Freedom? Democracy? Were they all invented in America? Obviously, except that every American President since the second world war has committed international crimes whether for ordering invasions of sovereign nations (Kennedy and the Bay of Pigs for example) or promoting and supporting state terrorism (Reagan and the School of the Americas and the Central American Wars of the 1980's for example) or subverting any number of democratically elected governments (Guatemala, Chile, Iran for example). This is only the start of the list and one could go on all afternoon with other examples of nefarious unhelpful unlawful international American behaviours.
The question is can a country love liberty, freedom, and democracy at home and hate it overseas. The answer is for a while crocodile if you are schizoid, but not for ever.
If along with Ms Wolf you are worried that American authoritarianism is turning inwards and American freedoms are under threat you should take a non-schizoid look at examples of American aggression in the world and feel even more uncomfortable. If you drop the idea that America is the freest nation on earth and look at the years of American disrespect for law and democracy in its foreign affairs, then you should brace yourself for stormy weather at home. If authoritarianism continues on its long march home and you can no longer rely on the idea that America is the freest nation on earth, well you may as well put on your joggers and head north to a less free nation like Canada.
In the meantime I would like Naomi Wolf to have a think about the issues and write a better book.
 The End of America: Letter of warning to a Young Patriot April 30, 2008
2 out of 3 found this review helpful
Naomi Wolf has written a wake up call to the American People. Her book could also serve as the frame work for the criminal indictments for treason that will surely be pursued against the agents of fascism and corporatism in America currently hiding in the Bush Administration.
There is going to be a day of reckoning for this administrations evisceration of our constitution, our armed forces, the middle class, the currency/economy, our individual rights and liberties and our standing in the world.
This book is a must read for anybody that cares about the United States of America.
A gem . . . April 21, 2008
1 out of 2 found this review helpful
Ms. Wolf has provided us with a timely, critical, concise wake-up call.
This gem should be required reading for each and every member of "our" Congress. And they should then be tested on it. There remains hope for our Republic yet. Buy a copy and ... start a chain book; give it away; donate it to a library.
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